TALK 3 – JULY 1ST

This talk and presentation will look at the staging of sound based works in gallery and non-gallery contexts and the relationship between sound, language and visual representation. Featuring Emile Zile, Speak Percussion’s Eugene Ughetti and their Artist in Residence, Kaylie Melville, and Alice Hui-Sheng Chang, moderated by Philip Samartzis.

Emile Zile is an artist, filmmaker and performer. Building on a background of live and single-channel video, his work utilises site-specific performance, portraiture and filmmaking to capture the traces of humanity left on the detritus of a digital culture.

Eugene Ughetti is the artistic director of Speak Percussion. His work focuses on new chamber music and hybrid-arts collaboration. Eugene has worked with most of Australia’s leading new music ensembles, some of the world’s finest composers including Steve Reich and Pierre Boulez and with conductors Valery Gergiev, James Levine and Charles Dutoit.
He has been a soloist in both orchestral and chamber music settings mainly premiering Australian music. He has composed works for The Australian Ballet, Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, ABC and Bionic Ear Institute. His works have been presented internationally and have won him a place as a finalist in the APRA/AMCOS and AMC Art Music Awards as well as the Melbourne Prize for Music.
Eugene was the winner of the inaugural Sidney Myer Creative Fellowship, OZCO Creative Fellowship (Early Career) and the MCA/Freedman Fellowship for Classical Music (2011).
“Off on another challenging acoustic adventure, Melbourne percussionist Eugene Ughetti is currently showing why he is one of this country’s most talented artists in the field of advanced contemporary music.” The Age

Alice Hui-Sheng Chang
As a vocalist working with extended techniques, Alice builds intimate exchanges with her audience. She creates an array of timbres and textures by controlling tension in her throat and alternating the passage of air and vocalisations. Alice’s performances respond to the energy of the audience, employing sound varying from the calm to the extreme to create an awareness of the acoustic properties of the site. She challenges the boundary of a presentation site physically and imaginatively, viewing each performance as a site-specific response.
Alice has been involved in residencies in Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, France, Portugal and UK. She has performed or exhibited in Australia, Taiwan, South Korea, China, Hong Kong, France, Germany, Austria, Switzerland, Spain, Poland, UK and US. She regularly collaborate with other sound artists and artists from different mediums in conventional and unusual spaces. She has experience running different group vocal workshops resulting in an experiential public performance, also one-off audience participation vocal ensemble.

Facilitator: Philip Samartzis is an associate professor in Sculpture, Sound and Spatial Practice at RMIT.
Philip researches in the areas of sound art, acoustic ecology and spatial sound practices, with a specific focus on sound, art and the environment. His PhD, Surround Sound in Installation Art, examined the place of sound in contemporary art practice through a range of site determined sound art projects. In 2009 Philip was awarded fellowships by the Australia Council for the Arts, and the Australian Antarctic Division to document the effects of extreme climate and weather events on the human condition at Davis Station in Eastern Antarctica, and Macquarie Island. In 2010 he undertook a three-year study of indigenous settlements in The Kimberley region of Western Australia through TURA’s remote regional residency program in order to document the social and environmental conditions of remote communities. In 2012 Philip established the Bogong Centre for Sound Culture with Madelynne Cornish at Bogong Village to facilitate cultural initiatives investigating the history and ecology of the Australian Alps.